being.  The double strain upon his energies, which daily work and nightly study with mental productiveness involved, acted injuriously upon his health, and after a year he became so delicate that he could carry on neither one nor other of his avocations without an interval of complete rest.  Obtaining leave from his employers, he went back for a period of six weeks to the village where he had been born.  Here in the early summer and sunshine his health rapidly improved; his mind even more than his body drank deep draughts of life; and here, more than at any period in his life, did his imagination begin to deal with mighty things, and probe into the secret mysteries of life, and here passed into the long descended line by which the human spirit passed from empire; he began to comprehend dimly by what decadence from starry state the soul of man is ushered into the great visible life.  These things came to him not clearly as ideas, but rather as shadowy and shining vision thrown across the air of dawn of twilight as he moved about.

Not alone did this opulence of spiritual life make him happy, another cause conspired with it to this end.  He had met a nature somewhat akin to his own:  Olive Rayne, the woman of his life.

As the days passed over he grew eager not to lose any chance of speech with her, and but two days before his departure he walked to the village hoping to see her.  Down the quiet English lane in the evening he passed with the rapid feet that bear onward unquiet or feverish thought.  The clear fresh air communicated delight to him; the fields grown dim, the voice of the cuckoo, the moon like a yellow globe cut in the blue, the cattle like great red shadows driven homeward with much unnecessary clamour by the children; all these flashed in upon him and became part of him:  ready made accessories and backgrounds to his dreams, their quietness stilled and soothed the troubled beauty of passion.  His pace lessened as he came near the village, half wondering what would serve as excuse for visits following one so soon upon the other.  Chance served as excuse.  He saw her grey dress, her firm upright figure coming out from among the lilac brushes at the gate of her father’s house.  She saw Harvey coming towards her and waited for him with a pleasant smile.  Harvey, accustomed to introspect and ideal imaginings, here encountered no shock gazing upon the external.  Some last light of day reflected upward from the white gate-post, irradiated her face, and touched with gold the delicate brown hair, the nosrtils, lips, chin, and the lilac of her throat.  Her features were clear-cut, flawless; the expression exquisitely grave and pure; the large grey eyes had that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will.  In some undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects of his dreams, delicate and subtle things, dew, starlight, and transparencies rose up by some affinity.  He rejected them—­not those—­then a strong warrior with a look of pity on his face appeared and disappeared:  all this quick as a flash before she spoke.